The Chef's Last Service

Dawson Burrows has been a chef for seven years, and tonight he plates the last dish he will ever send out of this kitchen. Thirty-one covers. A five-course tasting menu. He wipes the rim of the final plate with a towel and stands there for a second, looking at it.

"Chef, you good?" asks Marco, his sous chef for three years.

"Yeah. Just thinking," Dawson says.

"Thinking is for mornings. Go home. It's your anniversary, man."

"It is." He unties his apron. "Tell the crew I said thanks. For everything."

Marco gives him a look like he wants to say something bigger, but he just nods and calls out to the line. Dawson hangs the apron on the hook by the door. Seven years in this kitchen. He learned to cook here, burned himself here, met his wife two blocks away at a food truck when he was 22 and she was 21 and she'd just gotten off a cocktail shift and wanted tacos. Now he's 29, she's 28, and in three weeks they leave the city for a house in a suburb with a lawn he will have to mow.

The Neon Wreck is everything the kitchen is not. Sticky floors, mismatched vinyl booths, a stage the size of a pool table under pink neon. Gene Hawkins is behind the bar, 32 years old now, still built like a guy who carries kegs for fun.

"Burrows!" Gene yells over the noise. "Happy anniversary. First one's on me."

"Whiskey sour for her. Whatever you're drinking for me."

Betty arrives just after Dawson and finds him at the bar, and when Dawson sits down she kisses him on the cheek. She looks good. She always looks good, but tonight she's wearing the red dress she bought last month and said was "for occasions."

"Hi, husband," she says.

"Hi, wife. Five years."

"Five years." She sips the whiskey sour Gene slides over. "You survived the last service?"

"Last plate went out at 9:40. I watched the expo take it. Weird feeling."

"Good weird or bad weird?"

"Both." He drinks. "How was work?"

"Retail is retail. But I've been reading something online, and I've been waiting all week to tell you." Her cheeks go pink. She looks at her glass first, then at him. "I want to try anal. Tonight."

Dawson chokes on his drink. "Tonight."

"Tonight. It came up in this article and I couldn't stop thinking about it." She shrugs, casual as a weather report, except her face is red. "We're moving in three weeks. New house, new life. I figured, why not do something new before we go?"

"Okay," he says, because his brain is buffering. "Okay. Wow. Yes. I mean, I'm not saying no."

"You're saying wow."

"I'm saying wow because you've never once brought this up in five years and now you're saying it in a karaoke bar."

Betty grins at him. She has a hungry glint in her eye that Dawson knows very well, and it makes his stomach do a thing. "Well, I'm bringing it up now," she says. "And I'm serious, so don't chicken out on me."

"I would never."

Then the host, a wiry kid in a Neon Wreck t-shirt, leans over their booth. "You two signed up? There's a slot open."

"They're on the list," Gene calls from the bar, way too fast.

Betty frowns. "We're on the list?"

"Gene," Dawson says, standing. "What did you do?"

"Nothing. Go sing your little hearts out." Gene is grinning like an idiot.

It was supposed to be the surprise. Dawson signed them up three days ago, a duet, a bad 80s ballad, the kind of song they both secretly love. It was going to be the opener of the night, the thing she'd laugh about, and then dinner, and then whatever came after dinner. Now the surprise is upside down because his wife just told him what she actually wants for their anniversary.

"Since when do we have a song?" Betty asks as they walk to the stage.

"Since Tuesday. I picked it at lunch like a romantic idiot."

The intro starts, all synth and drums, and Dawson grabs the mic. His voice is not good. He knows his voice is not good. He sings the opening line anyway, loud, wrong, and Betty laughs so hard she nearly misses her first verse. By the second chorus they're both into it, screaming the high notes, the crowd of maybe forty drunk strangers clapping along. Dawson goes for the big note at the end and misses it by about four miles. Betty howls. Someone whistles.

They step offstage to mild applause and Dawson's face is still hot from singing. Gene is waiting at the bar, wiping a glass, watching them both.

"So," Gene says. "That was rough, buddy."

"You loved it," Betty says.

"I did. Hey, Dawson, come help me grab limes from the back for a second?"

Betty raises an eyebrow. Dawson shrugs. "I'll be right back."

Gene leads him past the restrooms, down a short hallway, and stops at a door with no sign on it. He speaks low.

"You look panicked. What's going on?"

"Betty wants to try anal. Tonight. She's dead serious, she said the word in a booth like she was ordering fries."

Gene blinks. Then he laughs, once, hard. "Five years married and she drops that on you at a karaoke bar?"

"It's our anniversary. She says it's a before-the-move thing. I want to give it to her, I just..." He rubs his face. "I didn't plan anything. We're not exactly adventurous people, Gene. Our whole thing is vanilla and I've been fine with that until an hour ago."

Gene digs in his pocket and tosses him a key. Dawson catches it against his chest.

"Storage room," Gene says. "There's a cot in there from when Courtney's cousin crashed here for a month. Door locks. Nobody goes back there on Fridays, everybody's too busy singing. And there's coconut oil in the kitchen, ask Courtney, she stocks the snack station."

"You have coconut oil in a karaoke bar?"

"Courtney stocks the snack station and busses tables. Don't ask questions, just be grateful." Gene grins. "Happy anniversary, man."

Dawson stands there holding the key like it might bite him. "You're the best friend I have."

"I know. Now go back out there before your wife thinks I'm recruiting you for a heist."

Courtney Forrest is bussing a table near the hallway when Dawson comes out. She's 30, Gene's on-and-off girlfriend of three years, and she reads Dawson's face in about two seconds.

"He gave you the key, didn't he," she says.

"How do you know?"

"Because he's been grinning since Tuesday when you asked him to set up the duet. He's a terrible secret keeper." She leans in. "Coconut oil is under the popcorn station. Warm it first, trust me."

"Thank you, Courtney."

"Have fun, you two."

Betty is still in the booth, half a whiskey sour left, singing along under her breath to whoever is murdering a Whitney Houston song now. Dawson slides in across from her and sets the key on the table between them.

She looks at the key. Then at him. "What's that?"

"Storage room. Gene's cot, a lock on the door, and apparently coconut oil."

Betty's mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. "You planned this?"

"I planned the duet. Gene planned the rest, apparently, because God decided to help me out." He turns the key so it catches the pink neon. "If you're serious. If you still want to."

Betty picks up the key. She holds it flat in her palm, and Dawson watches her go from surprised to decided in about three seconds. She knocks back the rest of her drink.

"I've been serious since Monday," she says. "Let's go before I chicken out or you do."

They cross the sticky floor hand in hand, past the stage, past Courtney who points them down the hallway like a flight attendant. Dawson unlocks the door. The storage room is small, lit by a bare bulb, shelves of paper towels and spare liquor, and a narrow cot with a folded blanket. It smells like coconut oil and old cardboard.

Dawson locks the door behind them. Betty sets the key on a shelf and turns to face him, and she pulls the strap of the red dress down off one shoulder, slow, watching him the whole way.

"Okay," she says. "Your turn."

Betty crosses the small room in two steps. Her hands go to his shirt, unbuttoning it fast, and Dawson just stands there letting her. She has never undressed him like this, with this much purpose, like he's a task she's decided on.

"You wore the shirt I hate," she says, shoving it off his shoulders.

"You've never told me you hate that shirt."

"Five years of marriage is built on small lies."

She drops to her knees in front of him, working his belt loose, then his jeans, and he steps out of them, half tripping because the room is four feet wide. She hooks her thumbs in his boxers and drags them down, and his cock springs free right at her eye level. She doesn't touch it. She just looks, then stands, satisfied.

"On the cot," she says.

"Yes, ma'am."

He sits and then lies back on the narrow mattress, which groans under him. The folded blanket smells like dust. Betty steps out of the red dress and her panties in one motion, and then she climbs onto the cot, knee on either side of his chest